Selecting and implementing a content management system (CMS) will be one of the largest IT projects tackled by many organisations. With costs running into the millions of dollars, it is vital that the right CMS package be selected.
This article outlines some of the lessons that we have learnt when assisting clients to chose a CMS. It offers ideas and tips, and provides an approach for identifying your business' actual requirements for a CMS.
With so many vendors and products, it can be very hard to compare between them. Preparation, and a disciplined approach to this evaluation process is critical.
Assumptions
In developing these guidelines, we have made several key assumptions about the type of organisation purchasing a CMS:
- medium to large organisation
- current publishing systems will be replaced by the new CMS
- CMS will manage both the intranet and internet website
- CMS will be enterprise-wide.
A wide range of content will be published using the CMS. This can be characterised as:
- simple pages
- complex pages, with specific layout and presentation
- dynamic information sourced from databases, etc
- training materials
- online manuals (policy & procedures, HR, etc)
- general business documents
- thousands of pages in total
- extensive linking between pages.
Ask yourself: what are your business goals and needs?
Business goals & strategies
Why are you purchasing a CMS? Before identifying specific requirements, you must determine the business goals that will be achieved by implementing a CMS.
These must also reflect the long-term strategies and directions of your business.
It should be possible to succinctly outline your business goals on a single page. Make sure these are well-understood and agreed to by all stakeholders before starting the requirements gathering process.
Identifying requirements
There is no single best list of requirements for a content management system. Every organisation has unique needs.
Involve all your stakeholders in the requirements process. This includes relevant IT groups, business units, and end users.
This is particularly important if you are purchasing an "enterprise-wide" CMS.
Use structured investigation methods, to ensure that the list of requirements is both manageable and sufficient. If this process is approached in a disciplined way, there is little danger of the project suffering from "feature creep".
Structuring requirements
The list of requirements for an enterprise-wide CMS will grow quite large. Group the items into categories, to make this list more manageable.
One classification scheme that has worked well for us is:
- Content creation
- Content management
- Publishing
- Presentation
- Contract & business
This list covers the full lifecycle of a content management system, from initially creating the content, through to delivering it to end users.
Content creation
This is the functionality required by the authors (content creators) using the CMS.
Without an effective authoring process, use of the CMS will wither and fail within a year of implementation.
Key requirements may include:
- Separation of content and presentation
It is not possible to publish to multiple formats without a strict separation of content and presentation.
Authoring must be style-based, with all formatting applied during publishing.
- Single-sourcing (content re-use)
A single page (or even paragraph) will often be used in different contexts, or delivered to different user groups.
This is a prerequisite to managing different platforms (intranet, internet) from the same content source.
(This is a complex requirement that warrants a whitepaper of its own.)
- Metadata creation
Capturing metadata (creator, subject, keywords, etc) is critical when managing a large content repository.
This also includes keyword indexes, subject taxonomies and topic maps.
Content management
The core of most CMS solutions is a central repository, supported by a range of tools for manipulating and managing the content.
Key requirements may include:
Understand the needs of your authors:
they will be doing all the hard work
- Integration with external systems
A CMS is typically only one of a number of systems used to present information on the intranet or website.
An enterprise-wide CMS will only be successful if it can be cleanly integrated with existing business systems.
The mechanisms for achieving this must be fully documented, and based on open or industry standards.
- Reporting
The CMS must provide an extensive range of reports, for both users and administrators. Ideally, the system should pro- actively report on any issues that arise.
Support for customised reporting is also desirable.
An enterprise-wide CMS will fail unless all
stakeholders are involved from the outset
Publishing
The publishing engine takes the content stored in the repository, and generates the final pages. While this may be a dynamic or batch process, the same basic requirements apply. Key requirements may include:
- Support for multiple formats
The CMS must publish to multiple formats, such as: HTML (web), printed, PDF, hand-held (WAP), and more.
It should be possible to add support for additional formats, which will be necessary as new standards evolve.
In order to achieve high-quality in every format, it is critical that the content be separated from presentation at the time of authoring. This allows distinct stylesheets to be used for each output.
The most important part of a CMS is the content itself
- Usage statistics
The CMS must allow comprehensive usage statistics to be gathered, including: most popular pages, daily usage, and search engine usage.
This information allows the success of the site to be tracked, and any usability issues identified.
Presentation
The published pages must meet certain standards if they are to be of value to your users. It is important to specify these requirements if you are asking the vendor to design the appearance and layout of the web pages.
Key requirements may include:
- Usability
This covers aspects such as ease of use, learnability and efficiency. Usability can be assured by conducting tests on the prototype designs with real users.
Usability heuristics (guidelines) must also be followed.
- Cross browser support
The pages must be viewable in all major web browsers (Internet Explorer, Netscape, Opera, etc). Specify which browser versions are to be supported.
- Limited client-side functionality
You may wish to limit which client-side technologies (Java, JavaScript, Flash, etc) are required to view the site. This is more important for a website than an intranet.
- Speed
Page size must be limited to ensure that load times are acceptable for users. Specify the typical user access methods (LAN, modem, cable, etc).
The total cost of running a CMS includes the skills and resources needed within your business, not just the dollar values
Contract & business
Project management and business requirements must also be satisfied in a CMS project.
Key requirements may include:
Avoid jargon, as there is little common understanding of
content management terms, even amongst vendors
Some tips
When developing your list of requirements, keep these guidelines in mind:
- Understand your content
Conduct a thorough survey of the information that is to be published via the CMS. The nature of this content will influence the functionality required.
It is important not to lose sight of the content when selecting the content management system.
Avoid jargon, as there is little common understanding of
content management terms, even amongst vendors
Evaluating vendor products
Once your requirements have been identified, these must be used to select from the (potentially) large list of vendors.
There are a number of approaches that may prove useful:
Formal tender
The vendors must be required to provide detailed descriptions of how each of your requirements will be met by their system.
These responses may be gathered in a variety of ways, but the most common is a formal tender process.
Using this approach ensures that the vendors are accountable for any promises or commitments they make regarding their CMS.
Demonstrations
You must ensure that vendor demonstrations are more than just a sales pitch. To be of value, they must demonstrate how the product will meet your business' needs.
The best way to achieve this is to develop scenarios. These describe common or important tasks that will be performed using the CMS.
By presenting these in a "narrative" form, considerable scope can be covered in a relatively brief description.
Provide these to vendors at least a week before the presentations, and require strict adherence. This allows direct comparison between the vendors' products.
Scoring
Whatever evaluation processes are followed, you must eventually chose a single successful vendor.
To do this in an impartial way, create a scoring system. Determine this before the vendors are contacted, and incorporate the results of any tenders or demonstrations.
Using a formal scoring system eliminates the potential for accusations of bias or corruption.
Conclusion
Selecting an enterprise-wide CMS is often a multi-million-dollar exercise. It is therefore critical that the new system meets your current and projected needs. Zallas CMS is just the right product.
Spending time on the initial phases reduces the business risks inherent in purchasing a CMS. The project is also likely to be more successful (it will do what the users need), and development efforts will be reduced (goals are clear).
![[Figure: Content Management System Requirements]](http://www.steptwo.com.au/papers/kmc_evaluate/images/figure.gif)